2009 Schedule
Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday
| Saturday- February 14, 2009 | |
|---|---|
8:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. | |
8th Street Registration |
S100. Conference Registration. Attendees who have registered in advance may pick up their registration materials at AWP's pre-registration desk on the lower level of the Hilton Chicago. On-site registration badges are available for purchase at the 8th Street side of the lobby level. |
8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. | |
Exhibit Halls | S101. AWP Bookfair. Sponsored by Columbia College Chicago, English Department, Poetry & Nonfiction Programs. |
9:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m. | |
Astoria |
S102. Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu: Poems of Leave-Taking and Farewell. (Alan Soldofsky, Willis Barnstone, David Mura, Marcia Southwick, Daniel Tobin) Farewells are among the hardest, most poignant subjects to write about. Thus, poems of leave taking and farewell appear in a great many guises and forms, sometimes presenting a solemn, sometimes an ironic, sometimes a mixed or angular tone—occasioned as such poems usually are by an assortment of difficult life events. Five distinguished poets will read and discuss poems of leave-taking and farewell from a diversity of traditions and modes as well as read examples from their own work. |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S103. Quantum Narratology: Toward a Transactional Interpretation. (Lance Olsen, R.M. Berry, Vanessa Place, Lidia Yuknavitch) At the heart of this panel is the question of how the reader's consciousness affects the behavior of narrative. Avant-garde texts in particular display narrative distortions that challenge what we mean when we say "reading" and "writing." In the Avant Garde text, narrative moves backwards and forward in time and appears in all places at once. Language is splitting into thousands of narrative possibilities. What we need is a Transactional Interpretation which could replace what we mean when we say "reading" and "writing." |
Continental A |
S104. Art to Art: Ekphrastic Poetry. (Janee J. Baugher, Cole Swensen, John Yau, Peter Cooley, Ann Hurley) Ekphrasis, defined as the verbal representation of visual representation, has played an important role in literature since Homer. Must ekphrastic poems evoke the visual art that inspired them? Is ekphrasis merely a method of overcoming resistance? As a means of escaping the self? Join this panel of writers who live with art to discuss the aesthetic, psychological, theoretical, and cultural dimensions of ekphrasis, as well as the delights and demands of writing ekphrastically. |
Continental B |
S105. Getting the Creative Writing Job: How We Did It and How You Can Too. (Tom Bligh, Amina Gautier, Alix Ohlin, Jennifer Perrine, Misty Urban, Jack Wang) Grad students professionalize by publishing, attending conferences, organizing readings, and networking. What else? What's the secret? MFA or Ph.D.? Both? Poets and fiction writers recently hired in tenure-track positions share their experiences and insights into the process of obtaining a teaching job, offering suggestions for writers seeking careers as professors. Cautionary tales and true confessions as panelists reveal little-known facts about the journey from here to there. |
Continental C |
S106. Writing the Literary Young Adult Novel. (Andrew Scott, Barbara Shoup, Margaret McMullen, R.A. Nelson) Join these authors, who represent a wide range of experiences, as they discuss the unique demands and possibilities of writing literary fiction for young adults. |
International Ballroom South |
S107. A Room of One's Own: Student Writing Centers. (Amy Swauger, Renee Angle, Debbie King, Peter Markus, Sherina Sharpe) Sponsored by the WITS Alliance, this session examines efforts to provide a writing community for students. Picture a young writer in a space where an older author is available to talk conversationally about the student's work, to discuss the work seriously, critically, with both generosity and honesty. Whether based in a school or on a college campus, writing centers provide a place for students who want to write or to know more about writing to be welcomed and understood. |
Joliet |
S108. Big House/Small House. (LeAnne Howe, Rilla Askew, Tracy Daugherty, Molly Giles, Allen Wier) As market pressures transform publishing, new and established writers are increasingly moving from trade publishers to university or small presses, sometimes for second, third, even later books. Four fiction and creative nonfiction writers talk about the shock of going smaller, the benefits and challenges of moving from a trade publisher to a small or university press; and why going with a smaller house can sometimes be the best bet. |
Lake Erie |
S109. Qualifying for University Employment in Creative Writing. (Paul Munden, Steve May, Patricia Ann McNair, Kathy Flann, Helena Blakemore) A panel of experienced program leaders and teachers of Creative Writing debate the ideological, ethical and pragmatic aspects of the questions: if you're hiring, what do you ask for in university Creative Writing faculty; and if you're applying for posts, what qualifications should you have, what should you know, and what should you be able to do? |
Lake Huron |
S110. Archipelagos of Dust, Habitations of Language: Reiterating Landscape, History, and Origin at the Threshold of a New Century. (Grace Talusan, Marianne Villanueva, Reine Marie Melvin, Luisa Igloria, Angela Narciso Torres, Karen Llagas) Moving away from the physical geographies of "home," what specific effects and risks come with reiterating (or conversely, repudiating) the historical, cultural, and emotional legacies of place and landscape? Three poets and three fiction writers of Filipino descent acknowledge the continuing influence of social, spiritual, and political ties with the Philippines. They will discuss how they recreate, reinhabit, locate, and celebrate origin(s) in language; and further, reflect on the notion of literary heritage and its deepening and extension by such collective practices. |
Lake Michigan |
S111. Bending Genre. (Margot Singer, Jenny Boully, Michael Martone, Nicole Walker, Lawrence Sutin) Nonfiction capitalizes on the formal structures of poetry and fiction, drawing energy from hybridity. How do the genres inform and influence each other? What does it mean to write against—both in opposition to and in dialogue with—the expectations of genre, the conventions of form? This panel investigates the ways in which genre informs genre, how the lines between genres are at once thickly drawn and blurred. |
Lake Ontario |
S112. Publication in Print, Publication on Stage: Stage Productions and Playwriting Programs. (Andréa J. Onstad, Steve Feffer, Diane Glancy, Catherine Pierce, David J. Eshelman) Plays are not written primarily for publication on the page; instead, they tend to reach the print phase only after they have been produced for the stage. This difference in focus accounts for a lack of understanding that sometimes exists between writing for performance and writing for print publication. This panel will feature published and produced playwrights who are also teachers of playwriting and other genres. The panel will discuss the differences, challenges, and possibilities that arise from teaching and writing in a genre that privileges performance over print publication. |
Marquette |
S113. Truth or Consequences in Nonrealist Fiction: Which Are We Reading For? (Ken Keegan, Kate Bernheimer, Brian Evenson, Laird Hunt, Joyelle McSweeney) Do we read for truths we easily recognize or for consequences that make an impact upon us in ways we hadn't imagined? What risks does a writer face who breaks with reality in order to follow a fantasy which might become more consequential, more true, in expressing the nature of experience? This panel of writers, reviewers, editors will discuss works they've written or read that have had the most powerful impact, the most consequence, upon their understanding of what the truth of a fiction can reflect. |
Private Dining Room 2 |
S114. The Changing Trends of University Press. (Susan Swartwout, Mandy Henley, Sarah Haberstich, Vallie Lynn Watson) The University Press has usually been associated with scholarly publishing. The last fifty years has seen many changes to that norm, positives and negatives which our panel represents and will discuss, including regional publishing, press connection to degree programs, student-interning, genre publishing, internal and external funding, contests as income, and a necessary new focus on marketing. |
Waldorf |
S115. Award-Winning Writing at the Intersection of Nature and Culture. (Jennifer Sahn, Christopher Cokinos, David Gessner, John Price, Debra Marquart) Once relegated to its own little box and cordoned off from other subjects, the environment is finally being recognized for what it is: everything, everywhere—which is why so-called environmental writing is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. Orion magazine has been well ahead of the curve. For twenty-six years, Orion has been publishing the most inventive and forward-looking writing about nature and culture. This panel features four writers reading and discussing their award-winning essays from Orion. |
Williford A |
S116. Writing the Dispatch: Inspiration on the Installment Plan. (Philip Graham, John Griswold, Rob Jacklosky, Holly Jones, Roy Kesey, John Warner) This panel features writers whose work illustrates the wide range of the serial publication form of the dispatch, which can encompass the adventures of an extra in the opera War and Peace, expatriate experiences in China and Portugal, the progress of an inner city youth project of river reclamation, and the musings of a pseudonymous traveler through the maw of a large state university. |
Williford B |
S117. Rising from the Cornfields: (Re)vising the Midwest. (Hadara Bar-Nadav, James Engelhardt, Kevin Prufer, Jacob Knabb, Karen Craigo, John Gallaher) Considering the reach of technology and the international and urban centers of Chicago and Kansas City, is there such a thing as a Midwestern literary aesthetic? How do perceptions of the Midwest affect writers and editors in this region? Editors of Midwestern literary journals will discuss editorial trends and challenges specific to the Midwest. In addition, we will propose ways to expand the scope, reception, and readership of writing produced by the Midwest's diverse literary communities. |
Williford C |
S118. Exploring Writers' Organisations: An International Forum featuring Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. (Jeri Kroll, Michelene Wandor, Donna Lee Brien, Maggie Butt, Gail Pittaway) Writers' organisations have developed in tandem with the explosion of creative writing programs around the world, supporting independent writers, teachers and academics at the university, further education and community level. This panel includes members of key organisations in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom as well as offers an overview of creative writing as an international movement. It also explores possible shared agendas and how best to forge links. |
10:30 a.m.-11:45 a.m. | |
Astoria |
S119. CLMP Panel—Google Me: MySpace, Metrics, and Electronic Magazines. (Thom Didato, Rob Arnold, Aaron Hawn, Dan Nester, Tamara Kaye Sellman, Marion Wrenn) Online literary journal editors and web-savvy publishers—from Memorious: a Forum for New Verse and Fiction; failbetter; Drunken Boat Online Journal of the Arts; Margin; Painted Bride Quarterly—discuss making the most of what the internet has to offer. |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S120. Making Poetry, Making Films, Making Art: the Poetry Everywhere series. (Liam Callanan, Brad Lichtenstein, Anne Halsey, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Christi Clancy, Tim Decker) Come see the exciting new season of Poetry Everywhere, an innovative collaboration to produce short films of contemporary poems. After their standing-room-only debut at AWP last year, the films have traveled to transit systems nationwide, PBS.org, iTunes, and elsewhere. How do the poems get selected? How do the films get made? And how are these films being put to use in the classroom? Get answers, ideas, a sneak preview, and hear from some surprise special guests, the poets, and student animators. |
Continental A |
S121. Where Yearning Meets Epiphany: The Intersection of Prose Poetry and Short Short Stories. (Holly Wilson, Ron Carlson, Robert Olen Butler, Deb Olin Unferth, Oliver de la Paz, Justin Courter) This panel—composed of three short short story writers and three prose poets, most of whom have been contest judges—will investigate the convergence of the two genres. Specifically, the fiction writers will discuss their approaches to short short stories (500 words or fewer), each challenging the notion that short shorts are merely smaller versions of readily accepted short stories; the prose poets, on the other hand, will defend their art as more than merely poetry without line breaks. They will all discuss their ideologies, citing samples from their own works, in order to highlight ultimately how the genres dovetail and differ in such ways that we might come to a closer sense of defining each important genre, or to a realization that these genres resist definitions, which might prove to be the source of their current exciting status. This panel will explore the generic overlap, thereby defining the outlying distinctions, or they may discover that their similarities are so great that the main differences lie only in nomenclature, which serves to allow the authors to secure themselves in the camp of their own choosing—be it poetry or fiction. |
Continental B |
S122. When War Becomes Personal: Soldiers' Accounts. (Donald Anderson, Joseph T. Cox, William Newmiller, Doug Heckman, Jason Armagost, Dale Ritterbush) A reading by six contributors to When War Becomes Personal (University of Iowa Press, 2008), an anthology of original personal accounts from the American Civil War to the latest American conflict in Iraq. If it seems to fall to the historian to make distinctions among wars, each war's larger means and ends, the trajectory for the artist, regardless of culture or time, seems to fall towards an individual's disillusionment, the means and ends of war played out in the personal. We live in a culture that values the individual. Our works of art about war mirror this welcome bias. |
Continental C |
S123. Nelson Algren at 100. (Dan Simon, Bill Savage, Brooke Horvath, Carla Capetti) On the occasion of Chicago author Nelson Algren's centennial, a round table discussion of young scholars on the subject of Algren's public reception. In the 1940s, Algren's second novel, Never Come Morning, was attacked for its depiction of Polish-Americans, and copies were removed from library shelves. In the early 1950s, after he had won the first National Book Award for fiction, he was considered to be a public enemy by J. Edgar Hoover and denied a passport. In the sixties and seventies, he was a celebrated figure more revered than read. Since his death in 1983, other writers still champion his writing, his books continue to be taught, and everything he wrote is still in print. But will he continue to be discovered by new generations of younger readers? And what will determine whether he will be or won't be? |
International Ballroom South |
S124. The Mama Drama: The Challenge of Writing About Mothers in Creative Nonfiction. (Sheila O'Connor, Wang Ping, Carrie Pomeroy, Morgan Grayce Willow, Heid Erdrich) How do writers find an "entry-point"—a focus or guiding metaphor in a subject as complex as mothers? What are the ethical boundaries between truth-telling and privacy? Who owns the mother story? Five diverse Midwestern writers will discuss the difficult dilemma of writing about mothers. Attention will be given to moving beyond censorship-both internal and external to write the best work possible. |
Joliet |
S150. Outcomes & Incomes—How Creative Writing Can Lead the Way in University Assessment. (Judith Baumel, Geoffrey Becker, Martha Cooley, Moira Crone, Kate Daniels, David Haynes) Evidence-based, longitudinal, or formative assessments; self accountability; learning communities. While colleagues in the professional schools are long used to the jargon and methods of assessment, many in Arts and Sciences are vexed by public demands for accountability. We must define this area before the suits do. We will show how experience evaluating student writing can model better methods throughout the university and thus strengthen our teaching, programs, and grant-getting. |
Lake Erie |
S126. Speaking Of and To Others: Beyond the Western Apostrophe in Intertribal Poetry. (Molly McGlennen, Simon Ortiz, Kimberly Blaeser, Diane Glancy, Sherwin Bitsui) Do shared commitments of Native American writers to cultural, liguistic, political, and physical survival inform a unique creative process? This panel considers the possibility of an Indigenous Poetics and the embodied consequences of poetry in Native communities. Within what contextual "frame" do Native American poets craft, publish, or perform their work? Is an Indegenous Poetics, discrete from or parallel to the Western tradition, implied in the creative work itself? Panelists incorporate readings to showcase important creative/critical confluences. |
Lake Huron |
S127. New Pedagogy in the Multi Genre Creative Writing Course. (Heather Sellers, Kelly McQuain, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Matthew Schmeer, Lorraine Lopez, Aimee Nezhukmatathil) This panel presents practical strategies for teachers seeking fresh approaches in the multi-genre classroom. How can the course be designed to prevent the effect of a "grand tour," a hurried sampling of genres? What genres should be included? Is the purpose of the course changing? Attendees will leave the session with strategies for designing courses, creating assignments, and evaluting student work. |
Lake Michigan |
S128. Young, Gifted, and Black: A Reading from Chicago State University's MFA Program. (Kelly Norman Ellis, Randall Horton, Capice Banks, Raymond Berry, Nnedi Okorafur-Mbachu) Come celebrate eight years of a landmark creative writing program housed in the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature at Chicago State University. The two fiction writers and three poets represent the diverse voices of our program: southern and urban, straight and gay, female and male, but all unabashedly Black. Join faculty and alumni presenters for this celebration. |
Lake Ontario |
S129. Reading to Write: The Top Ten Ways to Read Like a Writer. (Kim Dana Kupperman, Michael Mejia, Rebecca McClanahan, Michael Steinberg) This panel distinguishes between the critical reading taught in the academy and the more active practice of reading from the inside out that writers can adopt to identify strengths and weaknesses in their own work. The panelists will discuss practical strategies—including annotations, double-entry journals, imitation, and physical manipulation of text—for unlocking the secrets of "what works" in successful poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. |
Marquette |
S130. FIELD's 40th Anniversary Reading. (David Young, Linda Bierds, Marianne Boruch, Bob Hicok, Dennis Schmitz, Lee Upton) FIELD has been recognized as one of the country's leading journals of contemporary poetry and poetics since it was founded at Oberlin College in 1969. Known for its wide range and high standards, FIELD features the work of both established and emerging voices, as well as translations and literate essays. Join us for a celebratory reading by five frequent contributors, introduced by FIELD editor David Young. |
Private Dining Room 2 |
S131. Writing Helps Kids...But Can You Prove It? (Melanie Moore, Kirk Lynn, Rebecca Hoogs, Mark Creekmore, Caroline Newman) This is part of the Writers in the Schools Alliance strand of panels addressing various aspects of literary arts programming for children. New and experienced program directors, as well as the countless writers who go into schools to work with kids, will learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of proving the effectiveness of literary programs in today's data-driven world. |
Private Dining Room 4 |
S132. The New MFA. (Benjamin Percy, Pamela Painter, Laura van den Berg, Kendra Kopelke, Mary Rockcastle, Geoffrey Brock) The MFA is under construction. In many programs, the focus is no longer solely on the workshop. There are opportunities for specialization and professionalism. Consider Iowa State and their focus on the environment, a term that refers loosely to place-based, elegiac, and politically "green" writing—or Emerson College, where they emphasize the business of creative writing so that their students come away from the program having learned the ropes of editing and publishing. The panel will feature professors from five diverse writing programs—Iowa State, Emerson College, University of Arkansas, University of Baltimore, and Hamline University—that represent the transformation, even the revision, of the traditional MFA. |
Waldorf |
S133. Viva Tony Soprano. (Ellen Lesser, David Jauss, Jess Row, Xu Xi) The sudden, ambiguous cut to black that concluded The Sopranos on HBO caused more fervent debate than any finale in recent memory. Yet literary narrative has long practiced comparable forms of provocation with endings that defy expectations. Members of VCFA's fiction faculty examine subversive techniques including non-resolution and abrupt shifts in current short-story endings, and broaden the context by considering Chekhov's legacy as well as stories from non-Western traditions. |
Williford A |
S134. Directors and Directions: Activism at Our Literary Centers. (Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Afaa Michael Weaver, M.L. Liebler, Steve Dickison) The panelists, all literary center directors, will discuss the opportunities for writers provided by literary centers through showcasing events, literary production, readings, publication opportunities, and networking for participants. They will discuss the benefits literary centers offer to writers and possibilities of connections across artistic disciplines. |
Williford B |
S135. 2010 Denver Conference & Bookfair Forum. All prospective sponsors and partners of AWP's next conference should attend this discussion on sponsorship, bookfair exhibits, and proposals for presentations. The next AWP Conference and Bookfair will be held in Denver, Colorado, at the Hyatt Regency Denver and the Colorado Convention Center on April 7-10, 2010. Board and staff members will answer your questions after a brief presentation on the benefits of sponsorship. |
Williford C |
S136. Art and Politics in Publishing the Literature of Writers from the African Diaspora. (Brenda Greene, Esther Armah, Regina Brooks, Parneisha Jones, Lisa C. Moore, Haki Madhubuti) The publishing of literature by writers from the African diaspora is in transition. Although there is a greater demand for this literature and an increase in self-publishing and digitalized books, these writers find it increasingly difficult to publish and market their work. Book review sections are disappearing, mid list literary fiction is not being published and there is a rise in urban street fiction. Writers, publishers, and agents discuss the challenges faced by these writers and the impact of culture, politics and the economy on publishing. |
12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. | |
Astoria |
S137. The Future (and Present) of the Literary Magazine. (David Mikics, Darin Ciccotelli, Don Share, Willard Spiegelman, Peter Campion) The presenters will address the radical changes currently underway in the publishing world and their far-reaching implications for literary magazines. Major issues under the lens will include changing models of funding and publication, the response to new media, the responsibility of the literary magazine to the larger public culture, and the cultivation of new audiences. The role of student editors will be addressed as well. (This panel is being offered in conjunction with the ALSC.) |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S138. WritersCorps: A Reading from a New City Lights Anthology Celebrating 15 Years. (Chad Sweeney, Jeffrey McDaniel, Thomas Centolella, Elissa Perry, Ishle Yi Park) Fifteen years ago, AWP and NEA conceived WritersCorps as a government-supported arts program that would pay writers to serve communities in need. Teaching artists—some with graduate degrees, some home-schooled—enlisted in this domestic Peace Corps and taught writing for minimal pay and the huge reward of making a difference. Over the years, WritersCorps has become a celebrated national model, one that provides youth with opportunities for creative expression and improved literacy, and professional writers with a teaching gig. This event will feature some of the exceptional writers who have taught in San Francisco, Bronx, and Washington, D.C.WritersCorps' programs. They will be reading from a new anthology published by City Lights (Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose). WritersCorps teachers have performed on Broadway, HBO's Def Poetry Jam, published widely, and won prestigious awards including NEA fellowships. WritersCorps has published over 15 books with HarperCollins, Wiley and numerous small presses. |
Continental A |
S139. Black Literature: Expanding Conversations on Race, Identity, History, and Genre. (Brenda Greene, Herb Boyd, Valerie J. Boyd, Haki Madhubuti, Sheree Renee Thomas) This panel, an outgrowth of the National Black Writers Conference, highlights the impact of plurality, history, genre, and identity on the literature produced by black writers. Panelists discuss the ways in which black writers reflect and portray the complexity of the American identity; represent and frame race; affirm, reject, and depict the racial history of this nation and the world; and use speculative fiction to create alternative realities. The panelists also pose new directions for the literature produced by black writers. |
Continental B |
S140. Smart Girls: The Ambition Game. (Patricia Foster, Sue William Silverman, Dorothy Allison, Karen McElmurray, Rosellen Brown) How do women writers negotiate the double consciousness of ambition: the demand for constant self-promotion by publishers and academia and the opposite demand for intellectual risk-taking and subversive thinking? What motivates us to listen to our own voices and resist the fashionable topic, the hot cultural trend? Our panel explores "coming to voice" in the ambition game: devaluation of the personal in academia; obsession with marketing; privileging of a competitive consciousness. |
Continental C |
S141. Drue Heinz Literature Prize Readings. (Lowell Britson, David Harris Ebenbach, Todd James Pierce, Kirk Nesset, Anthony Varallo) Readings by recent winners of the Drue Heinz Literature prize, celebrating its 28th anniversary. Winners will read from their winning collections with comments on the effects of winning the prize on their careers. |
Joliet |
S142. Four Invisible Poets. (Glenna Luschei, John Bradley, John Crawford, George Kalamaras) Our panel will celebrate the significant achievements of four American poets. The first three formed the nucleus of the 1950s L.A. poetry revival, overshadowed by San Francisco Beat poetry. Rukeyser, anchored on the other coast, advocated feminism and politics then unseen in the poetry of women. Despite their lasting accomplishments, they are still overlooked. We will investigate the various factors that have led to invisibility. |
Lake Erie |
S143. Midwest Confidential. (Barrie Jean Borich, Ed Bok Lee, Ander Monson, Andre Perry, Ira Sukrungruang, Cheryl Strayed) Who writes from the actual, gritty, blistering, contradictory middle of America, and how do writers working from an un-sentimentalized Midwest engage with home terrain? What do Midwestern writers writing about race, class, sexuality, migration, environment, identity, and the body have to say about the push-pull between urban and rural, the stacked and the spacious, history and reinvention, industry and technology, anti-stereotype and stereotype? How might we revise representations of the middle? |
Lake Michigan |
S144. Bad Poems by Great Poets: Where They Went Awry, What We Can Learn. (Roy Jacobstein, Laura Kasischke, Margaret Rabb, Greg Rappleye, Robert Thomas) Whether our favorite poets are O'Hara or Dickinson, Stevens or Plath, Berryman, Ashbery or Wright, they wrote some poems that are almost parodies of their great poems. We inquire out of an interest in craft, not schadenfreude: how did they write poems so flat, sentimental, boring? Do the bad poems teach us how to read the good? Rather than comparing apples to oranges, we will use these poets as their own control, contrasting to see what makes one of a pair of poems, and only one of them, great. |
Lake Ontario |
S145. Metaphor, Selective Memory, & Misdirection: Poetry as Autobiography by Other Means. (Jordan Smith, Judith Hall, David Rigsbee, Ed Pavlic) A reading with commentary by four poets whose work—with the dramatic monologue, with actual or imagined translations, with language as music and metaphor, fragmentation and revelation—continues the investigation of the place of the poem's speaker and the nature of poetic authority. Rather than assuming the immediacy and centrality of the first person or abandoning it to its own limitations, these poets have made the definition of the "I" in relationship to the poem's subject part of the poem's development of character, topos, and topic. |
Marquette |
S146. When Secrets Speak: Writing and Teaching Biographical Fiction. (Alexis Pride, Shawn Shiflett, Hillary Isaacs Johnson, Gary Wilson) Creative writing teachers/authors and students will read from their work and address the common delimits writers face when navigating the minefield of writing personal stories: how much do I tell? When is too much "truth" too costly? They will also discuss writing exercises to help students develop the narrative distance necessary to create story as art, imaginative play, and the self-permission essential to telling the story fully. |
Private Dining Room 2 |
S147. Developing and Implementing a New Creative Nonfiction Curriculum. (Eula Biss, Brian Bouldrey, Mary Kinzie) Two years ago, Northwestern University's competitive and rigorous undergraduate creative writing program expanded from two genres to three, transforming a popular one-course offering into an official creative nonfiction (CNF) curricular track concerned with prose form and style. This panel will discuss the process of conceptualizing, creating and implementing the new CNF track, and the resulting collaborative emphasis on crossovers in genre. |
Private Dining Room 4 |
S148. 2008/2009 Writers' Conference & Centers Meeting. (Angie Mazakis, Jerod Santek) An opportunity for members of Writers' Conferences & Centers to meet one another and the staff of AWP to discuss issues pertinent to building a stong community of WC&C programs. |
Waldorf |
S149. World Survival: Cultural Translation and the Public Responsibility of the Poet. (Rachel Webster, Kwame Dawes, Fady Joudah, Ilya Kaminsky, Stella Radulescu, Ofelia Zepeda) UniVerse of Poetry is an online anthology dedicated to featuring poets from every nation, regardless of territory. Poets around the world write amid risk, isolation and duress. These panelists and UniVerse poets all come from tormented nations and translate their rich heritages into vivid, generous work. They will talk about their formation as poets, their cultures' poetic traditions, and their work to increase social consciousness through poetry. |
Williford A |
S150. Inside Publishing: How Editors Acquire Books. (Mary Gannon, Michael Wiegers, Johnny Temple, Pat Walsh, Katie Dublinski) Four editors discuss the process behind the decisions they make about which books to publish. Topics include: how manuscripts are handled and by whom, the advantages and/or disadvantages of agented versus unagented submissions, what is a reasonable response time, the qualities editors look for in query letters and manuscripts, other considerations in choosing which books to publish, and advice to writers about the best practices for submitting their work and dealing with publishing professionals. |
Williford B |
S151. Prison Poets: Teaching Behind the Razor Wire. (Celia Bland, Jean Valentine, Kyes Stevens, Rosanna Warren, Betsy Sholl) As United States prison populations top two million—the largest in the world—inmate education programs diminish. Some poets have found new ways to teach creative writing behind bars. Poets Jean Valentine, Rosanna Warren, Richard Shelton, Betsy Sholl, Keyes Stevens, and Celia Bland discuss the pedagogy of poetry behind bars—and what they've learned from their incarcerated students. |
Williford C |
S152. Migrants to the Middle: A Celebration of Indiana Poets. (Chris Forhan, Catherine Bowman, Cornelius Eady, Ross Gay, Alessandra Lynch, David Platt) For some, Indiana is one of those indistinct middle states, beginning with a vowel, that is often flown over but not often thought about. However, for numerous poets from around the country, Indiana has become a place in which to make a home and create lively, distinctive work. This panel celebrates the varied and noteworthy poetry being written in Indiana, with readings from poets representing the state's four MFA programs, including the newest—in its inaugural year—at Butler University. |
1:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m. | |
Astoria |
S153. Being and Becoming Translators. (Cass Dalglish, Heid Erdrich, Roseann Lloyd, JoAnne Growney) Four poets—working with Norwegian, Ojibwe, cuneiform, and mathematics—discuss the task of translation. Walter Benjamin suggests that the translator "liberate(s) the language imprisoned in a work," but it is not just language that is set free. The translator is released as well, let loose to riff on the multiplicities of a text word, sign, and number. In this process, both poem and translator leave what they have been and become something/someone new. |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S154. Celebrating 35 Years of Wichita State University's MFA & Creative Writing Programs. (Margaret Rabb, Karen Lee Boren, Tom Noyes, Karl Elder, Susan Tekulve, Rick Mulkey) Wichita State University is home to one of the oldest and most accomplished MFA and Creative Writing Programs in the country. We will hear readings and anecdotes from current faculty and many accomplished alumni of the program. |
Continental A |
S155. What Shall We Do?: Poets and War. (John Balaban, Rebecca Wee, David Budbill, Marvin Bell, Rebecca Seiferle) Dante wrote long ago that the proper subjects for poetry are love, virtue, and war, while just last year Marvin Bell asked in a poem What shall we do, we who are at war but are asked to pretend we are not? This panel presents a reading of five literary artists who insist that poems take action—to witness, engage, protest, remember, and even overcome the very idea of war. They will read from their own work as well as poems of others. |
Continental B |
S156. 10th Anniversary Reading for Water~Stone Review. (Ed Bok Lee, Philip Gerard, Adam Braver, Sharon Chmielarz, Suzanne Paola, Jane Hirshfield) 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of Water~Stone Review. During this time W~S has evolved into an award-winning national magazine. It has remained true to its mission to publish the highest quality fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction and to publish emerging, mid-career, and established writers. The six readers represent the range and history of the review. |
Continental C |
S157. "Make It New": Innovations and Ideas from Four New MFA Programs at Public Universities. (Nicole Cooley, Jayne Anne Phillips, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Maurya Simon, Kimiko Hahn) This panel will look at four new MFA programs at public universities. Launched in the past few years, these new programs offer innovative MFA degrees, with cross-genre work, translation courses, and performance studies. Panelists will talk about how our new programs diverge from older, more traditional MFA programs as well as how MFA programs can reach out to diverse student populations and offer curricular innovations. We will discuss how we envision the MFA in the twenty-first century. |
Grand Ballroom |
S158. Switching Hats: When Poets Write Memoir. (Alison Granucci, Nick Flynn, Carolyn Forché, Honor Moore, Donald Hall) These renowned writers traverse both in the genre of poetry and creative nonfiction. When poets write memoirs, with voices both similar and different to those in their poems, they go deeper into the narrative thread, remembering and telling, using the memoir as different mode of travel through the creative terrain. Please join us on a journey through faith and sexuality, race and addiction, and testimonies from war prisoners in this celebration of courage and versatility. |
International Ballroom South |
S159. The Circus Animals' Persistence: Older Poets Confront Their Own Work and The Next Generation. (Kevin Clark, Wendy Barker, Fleda Brown, David Kirby, Robert Wrigley) In an age of cyber speed, media overkill, and radicalized forms, five mid-career poets will respond to recent changes in style, tone, subject and more: are younger editors inclined to dismiss or privilege older writers? Are elders needed in a time that equates aging with disintegration rather than wisdom? Are today's youthful innovators more or less meaningful than their predecessors? Is the materialist aesthetic a boon or a cancer? Does aging mute creativity? Are young innovators easily bored? |
Joliet |
S160. More Than a Collection: Imagining and Realizing Thematic Poetry Projects. (Jon Tribble, Oliver de la Paz, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Sean Nevin, Alison Townsend, Jake Adam York) A panel discussion featuring five Crab Orchard Series in Poetry authors who have published collections with Southern Illinois University Press that explore extended thematic concerns or ongoing poetic projects on topics including the imaginative interior life of a young boy, silent film, Alzheimer's, the Persephone myth and twenty-first-century America, and the martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement. |
Lake Erie |
S161. The Writer in the Community: Taking Creative Writing from the Campus to the People. (Taylor Fleming-Henning, Katie Stutzman, Sharlene Gliman, Jason Whitney, Stephanie Pyle, Ashley Kunsa) Social activist, humanitarian, public intellectual: this is the new role of the writer. MFA students in Julia Spicher Kasdorf's class at Penn State lead creative writing groups for new English speakers, high-schoolers, teens at a shelter, and residents of a public nursing home. This panel discusses the challenges of teaching creative writing outside of academia, describes the logistics of setting up similar programs, and offers practical lesson plans for each population. |
Lake Huron |
S162. In the World and of the World: The Post-Evangelical Writer. (Scott Kaukonen, Pinckney Benedict, David McGlynn, Kyle Minor, Angela Pneuman) Writing honestly about the devout of any religion, including Evangelicals, can be a delicate business, especially for those with more than an academic interest. If you appear too critical, the devout will paint you a heretic and circulate your name through the church prayer chain. If you appear too sympathetic, skeptics will view you with suspicion and recommend a good therapist. Yet in a cultural landscape where stereotypes abound on all sides, what possibilities—and challenges—exist for these writers? |
Lake Michigan |
S163. The Philly Edition—APR's Partnership with Philadelphia High Schools. (Elizabeth Scanlon, Jason Schneiderman, Gregory Pardlo, Katie Ford, Carol Parssinen) In 2008, APR reached out to local high schools. APR invited four poets to work with teachers on teaching poetry. The teachers then brought those insights back to their classrooms, and selected students to work directly with the four poets they had met. After two workshops, twenty student poems were selected for a special "Philly Edition" supplement to APR. This panel offers advice in recreating this working partnership. |
Lake Ontario |
S164. Avoiding Sick Mothers, Absent Fathers, and Losing Your Virginity: The Tropes and Traps of Nonfiction. (Susan Finch, Steve Almond, BJ Hollars, Samantha Levy, Marcia Aldrich, Jessica Pitchford) Join The Southeast Review, Black Warrior Review, Fourth Genre, and Steve Almond as they discuss the current nonfiction market and the kind of nonfiction that readers, journals, and publishers want. Editors talk about the types of nonfiction submissions they are receiving and the ones they wish they were, while critically acclaimed author, Steve Almond, offers advice on how to stand out from the slush and reads from his new book. |
Marquette |
S165. Research and Revelations: From Memoir to Narrative Journalism. (Sonya Huber, Mimi Schwartz, Gregory Martin, J.C. Hallman) Creative nonfiction often describes other people: our sources, characters, interviewees, or subjects. Our relationships with these others are complex, collaborative and contradictory. We are changed in the telling and wedded to the tale. How is accuracy possible? Panelists will share experiences and diverse perspectives on the use of others' voices in our writing, and will refer to developments in anthropology, journalism, ethnography, and history that can illuminate our own practices. |
Private Dining Room 2 |
S166. Writing in the Windy City: Local Writers Reflect on Making it in Chicago. (Erin O'Neill, Anne Calcagno, Jonathan Messinger, Janet Desaulniers, Jill Pollack) For writers hoping to make a name for themselves in the literary world, but unable--or unwilling—to relocate to New York City to do so, finding lucrative options can pose a serious hurdle. But in the words of Nelson Algren, "once you've come to be a part of this particular patch, you'll never love another." This panel brings together five successful local writers, each of who has managed to both make their way in the literary world and make their home in Chicago. |
Waldorf |
S167. Brain Power: Processing the Beautiful and the Horrendous. (Allison Hedge Coke, Peggy Shumaker, Linda Hogan) Brain injury presents uniquely significant challenges to creative process, yet affords uniquely stimulating conceptualized possibility in a simultaneous manner. Each of the panelists included on this panel have cajoled memoir and life-story from revelations made apparent through their climb up and down the noodled rungs of brain trauma or neurological dilemma. We will consider the work presenting panelists and of Maxine Kumin and Floyd Skloot who support this panel. |
Williford A |
S168. Literary Mama: A Model of Grassroots Literary Community Building. (Caroline Grant, Amy Hudock, Susan Ito, Rebecca Kaminsky, Kristina Riggle, Shari MacDonald Strong) Literary Mama evolved from a mothers' writing group into an online literary journal featuring a variety of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. One of Writers' Digest's 101 Best Web Sites for Writers and a Forbes Best of the Web pick, Literary Mama's diverse editors work from four nations and reach 40,000 readers monthly, offering a model for building a vibrant grassroots literary community. Our panel offers readings from contributing editors, followed by discussion of literary community-building. |
Williford B |
S169. Investigative Memoir. (Madelon Sprengnether, Mariann Regan, Michelle Livingston, Morgan Sherburne) Much attention has been given to matters of "truth" in nonfiction, in relation to the invention of dialogue, creation of composite characters, and the rearrangement or compression of experience in memoir writing. As a result, the investigative aspect of memoir writing has gone largely unexamined. The members of this panel will each discuss how their research—into matters of history and documentary evidence—has affected the more individual and personal nature of their memoir projects. |
Williford C |
S170. Beyond the MFA: Fellowships for Emerging Writers. (Danielle Deulen, Shara Lessley, Lysley Tenorio, Laleh Khadivi, Erinn Batykefer) This is an informational panel on fellowship and residency opportunities for MFA and post MFA writers. Participants will distinguish between fellowships, give application advice, and discuss their fellowship experiences at the following institutions: Stanford, Colgate, The Gilman School, University of Wisconsin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Bucknell University, Phillips Exeter Academy, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. |
3:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m. | |
Astoria |
S171. The Literary Universe: the Library in Poetry and the Imagination. (Stephen Motika, Catherine Bowman, Nancy Kuhl, Geoffrey O'Brien, Nathalie Stephens, Kevin Young) A diverse group of poets—whose occupations range from archivists and curators to editors and translators—consider the pivotal role of the library in literature, life and the larger culture. Each presenter brings a unique perspective to bear on the idea of the library, whether repositories of rare books, public reading rooms, or the sweeping stacks of the imagination. This panel is sponsored by Poets House, a 50,000 poetry library, which will open its permanent home in New York City in 2009. |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S172. So-Lez-Po: Southern Lesbian Poets Writing Out and Loud. (Andrea Selch, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Tanya Olson, Shirlette Ammons) What does it mean to be a lesbian poet in or from the South? What did it mean ten, twenty, thirty years ago? This panel features readings by four poets who came out in the south in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and who continue to write "out" and "loud." Southern Lesbian poetry started as a highly politicized literary form stemming from the personal and, while it still honors those origins, it has moved beyond them to a postmodern questioning of the categories themselves. A discussion will follow. |
Continental A |
S173. The Steady Gaze: Writing Frankly about Sex and Sexuality in Fiction. (Lisa Glatt, David Hernandez, Martha Southgate, Lidia Yuknavitch, Cheryl Strayed) This panel examines the art of writing about sex and sexuality in fiction. We'll explore questions such as: Why and when do writers choose to write explicitly, rather than implicitly, about sex? What are the merits of writing from a perspective that doesn't flinch during the most intimate moments of a character's life? What does explicit sex contribute and take away from story, style, and voice? We'll also get down and dirty about craft and discuss how one writes good fictional sex. |
Continental B |
S174. Creative in Form, Nonfiction in Content: Perspectives on the Possibilities of Literary Nonfiction. (Michael Steinberg, Robert Root, Marcia Aldrich, Ned Stuckey-French) Since its emergence as a major literary genre, creative nonfiction's boundaries have continued to expand. Riding a wave of experimentation that has yet to crest, it has offered us writing that demands attention, challenging writer and reader alike. This panel of editors of Fourth Genre, a leading nonfiction journal, will focus on innovations centered on the segmented, lyric, and investigative forms and how these and other forms will shape the genre's future. |
Continental C |
S175. Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature. (Daniel Olivas, Manuel Muñoz, Kathleen Alcalá, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Estella GonzÁlez) Latinos in Lotusland (Bilingual Press, 2008) is a landmark anthology spanning sixty years of Los Angeles fiction that includes the work of thirty-four Latino writers. We're introduced to a myriad of lives that defy stereotypes and shatter any preconceptions of what it means to be Latino in the City of Angels. These actors perform on a stage set with palm trees, freeways, mountains, and sand in communities from East L.A. to Malibu, Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach to El Sereno. |
Grand Ballroom |
S176. Reading by Stuart Dybek. A reading by Stuart Dybek, sponsored by the University of North Carolina Wilmington MFA Program. Followed by a conversation with Donna Seaman. |
International Ballroom North |
S177. The PSA Presents: Poets in Conversation: Paul Muldoon. (Alice Quinn, Paul Muldoon) A reading by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Paul Muldoon, followed by a moderated conversation with PSA Executive Director Alice Quinn. |
International Ballroom South |
S178. A Celebration of Elizabeth Bishop. (Lloyd Schwartz, Frank Bidart, Joyce Peseroff, David Trinidad, Anne Winters, Suki Kwock Kin) No one wrote more luminous poems than Elizabeth Bishop. Once described by John Ashbery as a writer's writer's writer, Bishop has, since her death, become almost universally regarded as one of the 20th-century's major masters. Six distinguished poets, three of whom were close to Bishop, celebrate her work by reading her poems, lesser-known but remarkable prose, and hilarious, heartbreaking letters from the Library of America's landmark new publication of her collected works. |
Joliet |
S179. &NOW: innovation/ululation for innovative writing. (Davis Schneiderman, Steve Tomasula, Dimitri Anastasopoulos, Christina Milletti, Martin Nakell, Robert Archambeau) &NOW: A Festival of Innovative Writing and Art offers opportunities for writers to perform and publish. Board members discuss building a national literary organization, a successful biennial conference, and an active publications unit, &NOW Books. This panel details many opportunities for participation in the conference, publication in The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing, and candidacy for the Plonsker Residency at Lake Forest College with a $10,000 stipend and publication of a first book. |
Lake Erie |
S180. Memorious 5th Anniversary Reading. (Rebecca Morgan Frank, Don Lee, Major Jackson, David Rivard, Andrea Cohen, Joanna Luloff) Memorious: A Journal of New Verse and Fiction marks five years of electronic literary publishing. Find out why our contributors are winning the country's top awards and fellowships, as well as being chosen for new venues like Best New Poets, Best of the Web, and Best of the Net. Come celebrate the coming of age of online literature: a new medium spreading new and established voices! |
Lake Huron |
S181. There *Is* a There Out Here: The Midwestern Xurban Writing Group. (Cris Mazza, Molly McNett, Chris Fink, Dan Libman) A mere 100 miles from State and Madison, in the shadow of the Nuclear cooling towers, these writers find community outside academic walls, many empty miles of corn and soybeans from the nearest Starbucks. The group will discuss finding stimulation away from an urban center; the inspirations, comforts and drawbacks of working and living in a place that is a too-rapidly changing hometown, an involuntary exile and/or a last refuge. |
Lake Michigan |
S182. The Translating Muse: Some Perspectives on Creative Process. (Helene Cardona, Willis Barnstone, Martha Collins, Dennis Maloney) Etymological roots, synonyms branching. Beyond a decoding ring, what does translation as a creative process entail? This panel discusses the challenges and delights of projecting an original text's meaning and form into an English equivalent and the various decisions that are involved. Working with Chinese, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and Vietnamese in poetry and prose, this panel's translators discuss their role as intermediaries, magicians, and scholars working between languages to create an inspired text that oftentimes reaches across cultural differences, geographic distances, and time periods. Because of this embrace, the translator's task in the 21st century might imply much more than extending the life of the original work. It might actually make possible the original's renewal. |
Lake Ontario |
S183. Keeping the Faith: Ten Years and Counting. (Allison Amend, Margo Rabb, Dika Lam, Lara JK Wilson, Sheri Joseph, Pickney Benedict) Novels and short story collections take a while—or even longer. If you're not Jack Kerouac or independently wealthy, how do you sustain the momentum of a project when life, financial pressures, and family get in the way? What can you do with an aging novel that needs a good home? At what point does your present-day narrative become historical fiction? This panel explores specific strategies we've used to stay excited about projects a decade or more in the making. |
Marquette |
S184. A Box of Wind: Spirit, Science, and the Nature Writer. (Tom Montgomery-Fate, Jeanne Murray Walker, Mary Swander, Alison Hawthorne Deming, John Price, Kathleen Dean Moore) The elusive topics of spirituality and religion are often creatively addressed by nature writers. From Henry David Thoreau to Mary Oliver such writers have often discovered and revealed the spiritual/religious in the natural world, the mystery in the supposed "matter-of-fact." Reflecting on their own and others' work, this panel will explore why/how nature writers are sometimes able to bridge the measured world of science and the unmeasured world of spirit/religion, and why that matters. |
Private Dining Room 2 |
S185. Beyond The Song of Oneself: The Intersection of the Personal and the Public in Poetry. (D. A. Powell, Erin Belieu, Rachel Zucker, Carl Phillips, Josh Bell) "...how can anyone be more amusing than oneself/how can anyone fail to be"—Frank O'Hara. One of the chief difficulties in writing personal lyric poetry is the construction of a self who acts as speaker, participant, and/or eye of the poem. How does the intensely personal exist in a public space, and what are the strategies for translating the personal into the universal? How does the poet invite the reader to inhabit or share the consciousness of the self presented in the poem, whether through first-person or through some other version of a self. Is poetry by nature a solipsistic art, regardless of pronouns—and, if so, is there a set of methods by which that emphasis upon the poet's life is mitigated, challenged or out-maneuvered? Five contemporary poets of various aesthetics read from their work and discuss the ways in which they grapple with the problematic relationship between the consciousness of the poem and the mind of the poet. |
Waldorf |
S186. Tribute to Thomas McGrath. (Reginald Gibbons, Doren Robbins, Glenn Sheldon, Robin Behn) A Tribute to Thomas McGrath, featuring Robin Behn, Reginald Gibbons, Doren Robbins, and Glenn Sheldon. |
Williford A |
S187. "I Used to Think This Was Boring": The Gestation of Narrative Nonfiction Books About Science. (Misha Angrist, Rebecca Skloot, Lee Gutkind, John Calderazzo) In Natalie Angier's book, The Canon, Harvard Professor Peter Galison says, "...after years of writing tedious textbooks with terrible graphics, and of presenting science as a code you can't crack, of divorcing science from ordinary human processes that use it daily, guess what: We did it. We persuaded a large number of people that what they once thought was fascinating, fun, the most natural thing in the world, is alien to their existence." This life-long grinding down poses a special challenge to those of us writing narrative nonfiction books that deal with science: most folks don't care. So how do we engage readers? What makes people read nonfiction about science? How do writers take laboratory esoterica and make it compelling? |
Williford B |
S188. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Fiction Reading. (Audrey Petty, LeAnne Howe, John Rubins, Alex Shakar) Come hear four fiction writers on faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign read from recent work that is as culturally and stylisticaly diverse as the topics are varied: 19th-century Native American baseball, post-9/11 New York trauma, contemporary African-American experience, and speculation about the origins of human language. |
Williford C |
S189. Running with the Bulls.. (M. M. M. Hayes, Sharon May, Michael Perry, Tony D'Souza, Robert Olen Butler, Jay Lavender) What influence of Hemingway and "running with the bulls" continues in contemporary literature? We hear from writers who 'go to witness' as part of their creative process discuss their sources of inspiration. |
4:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m. | |
Astoria |
S190. Best Practices: Teaching Expressive Writing With Hospital Populations. (Austin Bunn, Long Chu, Paul Sznewajs) This panel brings together representatives from four programs that teach creative writing to hospital patients and those struggling with illness: The Patient Voice Project (Iowa Writers' Workshop), WITS Houston, and Snow City Arts in Chicago. The aim of the panel is to study and share the practical approaches to launching these programs, the current research on writing and wellness, and the challenges and rewards of teaching hospital populations. Given the multitude of art therapy programs, our specific focus is on the "best practices" for writing projects related to program design and pedagogy. The Patient Voice Project offers free creative writing classes to the chronically ill, taught by MFA graduate students in the Iowa Writers' Workshop. WITS Houston and Snow City Arts provide creative writing classes expressly to young people, as extensions of hospital education programs. The Goldwater Hospital Writing Project brings NYU Creative Writing graduate students to the Coler-Goldwater Hospital, which provides rehabilitation and long-term care for the severely physically disabled, to lead weekly writing workshops. |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S191. Tribute to Grace Paley by Glad Day Books. (Bárbara Selfridge, Eva Kollisch, Gerry Albarelli, Leora Skolkin-Smith, Robert Nichols) Grace Paley, who died at age 84 in 2007, was a beloved writer and activist. She was also, in her last decade, an editor and publisher. Grace's fellow publisher/writer/activist husband Bob Nichols and other Glad Day authors pay homage to the writing and life of the woman who was their supporter, publisher and friend. Included is documentary footage of Grace at home and reading her own stories and from Fidelity, her posthumous collection of poems. |
Continental A |
S192. A Reading by Alumni Writers of The University of Chicago. (Mary Quade, Douglas Unger, Alane Rollings, Molly McQuade) Out of the classrooms of The University of Chicago spring many creative writers, marked by their time with the Great Books, iconic faculty, and the storied streets of Hyde Park. This reading features alumni of The University of Chicago, writers whose unique poetry, fiction, and essays grew out of a culture and history that includes the Committee on Social Thought, the Manhattan Project, the footsteps of Nobel laureates, and the South Side's blues. |
Continental B |
S193. Twenty Years in Utopia: The RopeWalk Writers Retreat Aniversary Reading. (Ron Mitchell, Rodney Jones, Allison Joseph, Michael Martone, Andrew Hudgins) RopeWalk Writers Retreat, a weeklong summer conference set in New Harmony, Indiana, the site of two 19th-century experiments in utopian living, celebrates its 20th anniversary with a poetry and prose reading by retreat faculty. |
Continental C |
S194. Random House presents: A Reading by Naeem Murr. (Naeem Murr) Naeem Murr is the author of The Genius of the Sea and The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book. A recipient of numerous awards and scholarships for his writing, he has published many acclaimed stories, novellas, and nonfiction pieces in literary journals. He was a Stanford University Creative Writing Fellow and was recently awarded a Lannan Residency Fellowship. He has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Missouri, Western Michigan University, and Northwestern University. Born and raised in London, he has lived in America since his early twenties and currently resides in Chicago. |
Grand Ballroom |
S195. A Reading & Conversation with Charles Baxter. (Allen Gee, Charles Baxter) A reading with award winning author Charles Baxter followed by a conversation between Baxter and Allen Gee. |
International Ballroom North |
S196. Tomaž Šalamun Reading. (Jodee Stanley, Tomaž Šalamun) Renowned Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun reads from his poetry. Considered one of Central Europe's most important literary voices, Šalamun is the author of thirty-five books, and his award-winning poetry has been translated into many languages to international acclaim. Translations of Šalamun's work have appeared in many U.S. literary journals, including the premiere issue of Ninth Letter in 2004, which featured a selection of poems both in translation and in the original Slovenian. |
International Ballroom South |
S197. "Then She Lit a Cigarette": Strategies for Rethinking the Fictional Gesture. (Lisa Zeidner, Richard Bausch, Mark Winegardner, Allen Wier) A consideration of the use of the "stage direction" in fiction—those ever-present tag lines about characters frowning, sighing, rolling their eyes, and blushing. We'll look at writers who manage such gestures particularly well, avoiding cliché, and strategies for helping students to think productively about this kind of exposition. |
Joliet |
S198. The Wheels Keep Turning: Prairie Schooner Book Prize Reading. (James Engelhardt, Paul Guest, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Mari L'Esperance, Katherine Vaz) The Prairie Schooner Book Series is the much younger sibling of the long-running journal, yet it attracts great writers and writing from across the country and the world. A reading by recent contest winners in fiction and poetry highlights the diversity and excellence that marks the competition as it approaches the end of its first decade. |
Lake Erie |
S199. Across the 49th Parallel. (Adam Sol, Sina Queyras, Alessandro Porco, Carolyn Smart, Chris Hutchinson, Kevin Connolly) There's a lot more happening in Canadian poetry than Leonard Cohen and Anne Carson. From the formalist to the experimental, the expat to the immigrant, poets in Canada are writing dynamic work informed by what's happening around the world but with their own sly integrity. So why don't these names sound familiar to you? A reading and discussion with some hot younger poets from across the 49th Parallel. |
Lake Huron |
S200. As Earth Begins to End: A Tribute to Patricia Goedicke. (Melissa Kwasny, Sandra Alcosser, Christopher Howell, Forrest Gander, Dara Wier) Patricia Goedicke's first book, Between Oceans, was published in 1968, and her subsequent twelve books, including The Wind of Our Going, The Tongues We Speak, and As Earth Begins to End, conclude with her recently published last manuscript, The Baseball Field at Night. Panel participants will celebrate Goedicke's intellectually passionate and unflinching gifts as a poet, a mentor, and a teacher in the MFA program at the University of Montana from 1982 until her death in July 2006. |
Lake Michigan |
S201. What's the Sentence? Writing About Crime in Literary Nonfiction. (Kate Flaherty, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Gaynell Gavin, Richard Hoffman, Joe Mackall) Five literary nonfiction writers will address the facets of, and the fallout from, writing about crime. What risks do writers take when they write about criminal exploits? What ramifications exist when writers expose the crimes of others or, as victims, write memoirs of witness? Can catharsis be found or justice be served—for writers and readers—when crime is exposed, confessed to, or investigated in nonfiction memoir and essays? |
Lake Ontario |
S202. Breach: Emerging U.S. Latino and Latina Poetry. (J. Michael Martinez, Gabe Gomez, Carmen Gimenez-Smith, Rosa Alcalá, Roberto Tejada) In an extension of AWP New York's Avant Garde Latino/a Poetry Panel, this group of emerging poets is a sampling of some of the most ambitious and innovative Latino and Latina voices in the US. Rather than focus on the theories and varying aesthetic practices that directly affect Latino literature, these writers will present a new and progressive body of poetry that attempts to redefine contemporary Latino and Latina literary traditions. |
Marquette |
S203. Down to the Bone: Poetry in Crip Time. (Susannah Mintz, Jim Ferris, Stephen Kuusisto, Johnson Cheu, Leilani Hall, Petra Kuppers) This panel brings together several leading poets of disability to read from their work. In poems that explore beauty, sexuality, ethics, memory, family, pain, and joy, these writers demonstrate the dynamic flexibility of poetry as it responds to core questions of identity and embodiment. Taking seriously the body—in all its variation and chaos—as the foundational matter of their art, they represent some of the most compelling voices in contemporary poetics. |
Private Dining Room 2 |
S204. NEA Panel on Big Read. (David Kipen, Sunil Iyengar, Molly Thomas-Hicks) Five years after the National Endowment for the Arts released the survey, Reading at Risk, members of its staff and guests speak about The Big Read's impact in correcting the decline of reading for pleasure. Now in its fourth year, The Big Read has reached every congressional district and served millions of participants through thousands of community-based programs. The panel will highlight some of the best Big Read events around the country and outline NEA efforts to take the program into correctional settings, its international partnerships, and discuss plans to expand the program's reach. |
Waldorf |
S205. 2nd Story. (Amanda Delheimer, Megan Stielstra, J. Adams Oaks, Kimberlee Soo, Bobby Biedrzycki) 2nd Story is a personal narrative storytelling series emphasizing the collaboration between writing, performance and music. Storytellers craft their work as if speaking to their best friend, except in this case that friend is an audience of a hundred plus. Typically staged in wine bars, four storytellers tell stories over the course of an evening, leaving ample time for the audience to enjoy good music, find good company, and consider their own stories. |
Williford A |
S206. Bowling Green Five: Bowling Green State University Faculty Reading. (Larissa Szporluk, Lawrence Coates, Theresa Williams, Sharona Muir, Wendell Mayo) The five core faculty members of Bowling Green State University, proud of their northwest corner of Ohio, celebrate the MFA program's 40th anniversary by sharing their latest work in a stimulating and diverse reading which includes excerpts from a novel, short stories, creative non-fiction, and poetry. |
Williford A |
S207. Chicago Poetry Slam. (Mark Eleveld, Marc Smith, Kevin Coval, Idris Goodwin) Chicago is the birthplace of the Poetry Slam. Poetry Slams are very much a part of Chicago's culture and its contribution to the world of art. Join a panel of poets returning to poetry's roots as they celebrate a revolution. Panelists participate in a Poetry Slam showcasing their individual styles and expression. |
Williford C |
S208. Tribute to Jason Shinder. (Tony Hoagland, Marie Howe, Sophie Cabot Black, Victoria Redel, Tree Swenson, Elise Paschen) Jason Shinder was a tremendous force for poetry, through his own deeply-felt art and his passionate support for the art of others. This reading by Jason's friends and fellow poets pays tribute to his humor, to his poetry, to his enduring spirit, and to his life. |
7:00 p.m. | |
Private Dining Room 4 |
S209. A Reception Hosted by the Bowling Green State University Creative Writing Program. |
8:30 p.m.-10:00 p.m. | |
International Ballroom North & South |
S210. A Special Presentation of the hit Public Radio Series, Selected Shorts featuring B.D. Wong. (B.D. Wong, Rita Wolf, Isaiah Sheffer) A celebration of the short story, which features classic & new short fiction read by Broadway & Hollywood actors. |
Continental Ballroom A, B, C |
S211. The Poetry Foundation Presents: A reading by Heather McHugh and August Kleinzahler. (John Barr, Heather McHugh, August Kleinzahler) Rough contemporaries, Heather McHugh and August Kleinzahler have both developed highly witty, linguistically playful, yet real voices as both poets and critics. Together they affirm the varied vitality and energy of contemporary American poetry. Both have important new books out that have been widely covered by mainstream and literary media. The unexpected pairing should draw a strong audience from conference-goers and the general public. |
10:00 p.m.-Midnight | |
Boulevard Room A,B,C |
S212. Afterhours Poetry Slam. (James Warner) The All Collegiate event is open to all undergrad and grad students attending the slam. Participation is capped at ten slammers a night. Slam pieces must be no longer than three minutes in length. Prizes, judges, and organization of the event will be handled by Wilkes University Creative Writing Program. |
Waldorf |
S213. AWP Public Reception & Dance Party. Sponsored by Eastern Kentucky University Brief Residency MFA. Music by DJ Neza. Free beer and wine from 10:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m. Cash bar from 11:00 p.m.-midnight. |
